Contracting with Externalities
研究一个委托人与多个代理人之间存在多边外部性时的契约签订问题，分析公开与私下契约的效率差异，并探讨通过信息传递实现有效结果的机制。
The paper studies contracting between one principal and <it>N</it> agents in the presence of multilateral externalities. When the principal commits to publicly observed bilateral contracts, inefficiencies arise due to the externalities on agents' reservation utilities. In contrast, when the principal's offers are privately observed, inefficiencies are due to the externalities at efficient outcomes. When the principal can condition her trade with each agent on others' messages, she implements an efficient outcome, while threatening deviators with the harshest possible punishment. However, in the presence of noise that goes to zero more slowly than <it>N</it> goes to infinity, asymptotically agents become nonpivotal, and inefficiency obtains.